S.S. v. Michelle McMullen’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 district · 2 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The line between action and inaction has been important in the law for centuries, but it has proven to be an elusive and thin one; so it is perhaps not surprising that cases on either side of that line will be so close factually that drawing a legal distinction between them will often seem hard to justify. But we see the distinction nevertheless. While the state did do something here, or at least in the present procedural posture we assume that it did, in the peculiar circumstances of this case the state’s act is the same as if it had done nothing. The distinction is one, moreover, that we think DeSha-ney requires us to draw.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 152 F. Supp. 2d 1128 - Lansdown v. Chadwick

2. “act affirmatively to place [him] in a position of danger that he ... would not otherwise have faced.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. William Anderson v. City of Minneapolis